Series: Part 2 of In The Time Of Our Lives

A New One Now Begins
One-shot

They weren't even looking for him when they got him back.

They were lost in the m Iiddle of another time storm, hanging onto restraints and listening to Sara curse as she tried to regain control. She wasn't. She couldn't. As much as she'd learned since she took over as captain, she was no pilot. She hadn't been trained as one.

"Let off the right thruster. You're pushing it too hard," Mick shouted out.

She reached for the controls as the Waverider jolted again. "Take over!" she called back. "You know how to fly."

He nodded, already hitting the release on his restraints before he darted forward. His stomach rolled as he fell into the chair she'd stumbled out of and watched to make sure she'd secured herself in. "Hold on."

There was a flash of something that looked like lightning as the storm went from greens and yellows to a blue that set him on edge. Familiar, he thought, but he didn't have the time to think about it too much. He hit the controls to shut down the right thruster and held on as the ship tipped sideways right before it leveled out.

Something hit the side, a thud lost behind the sound of the storm, and he pulled back on the throttle. "Crash landing," he warned and just hoped they didn't land in the water this time.

The lights went out at the impact, bodies snapping forward in chairs. Nate groaned right before he puked and Ray let out a grunt of agreement. "Right there with you," he croaked.

"Can we get the lights?" Jax questioned. "And Advil?"

"Rebooting," Mick grunted. "Give it a minute."

Amaya squinted in the dark. "Where are we?"

"Ask Gideon." He pushed himself out of the captain's seat, head pounding and legs shakier than he'd like to admit. He braced himself on the edge of the console. "I doubt it's Aruba."

Someone gave a half-laugh, but it got interrupted by a pained groan. Mick glanced towards Nate and Ray, figuring one of them was still sick, but they both waved him off.

"I'm good," Nate assured him, still looking a little green. "No more puking."

"What he said," Ray agreed, even if he did swallow thickly after.

The lights flickered before they came back on and Mick flinched against it. Too bright, he thought. It was definitely night wherever they'd landed. Whenever they'd landed.

"Everyone good?" Sara called and nodded once they'd all replied. "Gideon?"

"Yes, Captain Lance?"

"Where are we?"

"We appear to have landed in Boston, Massachusetts. Year, 2032," Gideon replied. "We also have an injured party beside the Waverider."

"We hit someone?" Stein asked at the same time Sara shot Mick a panicked look.

"No," the AI said. "It seems to be Mr. Snart."

None of them believed it, but they ran out of the ship anyway, sliding around corners and stumbling down the boarding ramp. It wasn't him, Mick told himself. It couldn't be. Snart was dead in 2032, had been since he left Central in 2016 and took off on a mission he wouldn't come home from. It wasn't him. It wasn't.

It was. He stopped as he made it to the ship's right flank, eyes wide and body frozen as he stared at the crumpled body in front of him. No parka, he realized absently while his brain struggled kick back into gear. The clothes he was wearing were a mess, left arm completely burned away and the skin raw beneath it. Torn. Bloody. Eyes closed.

"Leonard," he breathed right before his feet took control and his whole body darted forward. He didn't think, just fell beside his partner, hands hovering uselessly, because where else was he hurt? He couldn't hurt him. Couldn't...

"We need to get him inside," Sara said somewhere to his right.

"I got him," Nate offered.

Mick glanced up, eyes on steel hands, and shook his head. "Stretcher." Nate didn't know his own strength sometimes. He couldn't risk it.

Nate's body went back to normal and he nodded. "We'll get it."

"Jefferson and I will prep the med bay," Stein volunteered.

"He's alive, right?" Jax asked, voice cracking.

Amaya reached over, touch gentle as she felt at Len's neck. "Yes."

Alive. He was alive.

"Lenny," he breathed again. His eyes burned.

Snart didn't make a sound, not in the transport nor in the transfer from stretcher to the medical chair. They reclined it as far as they could, trying to turn it into some kind of bed as Stein stuck wires onto his partner. Erratic heartbeats. Blood dripping sluggishly from a gash near his hairline.

Jax choked. "His arm..."

"Gideon, can you fix it?" Sara asked, her voice a controlled calm that sounded a step away from hysteria. "You grew back his hand."

Mick didn't listen to the response. He simply stared at Len as everything else reduced to chaos and white noise. He couldn't move—couldn't blink—too scared that Len would vanish if he did.

They cut his clothes away, staring and gasping at the scars Snart had always kept hidden under layers of fabric. The scars were as familiar to Mick as his own and he reached forward, fingers tracing an old knife mark on Len's right shoulder. No one stopped him. No one asked. He didn't think he would have told them the stories, anyway. These weren't the types of stories they shared around the dinner table.

"When is he from?" he asked eventually, long after wounds had been bandaged and Gideon had set to work on healing the burns on Snart's arm.

"2016," she said.

"Before Rip got us?"

"No," she said. "His right hand shows regrowth, consistent with the treatment he received here."

They all went still.

"This is the Snart from the Oculus?" Sara asked.

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"His body has high levels of temporal energy that matches the readings gathered from the Oculus," Gideon replied.

Jax swore. "He's been in the time stream this whole time?"

"I cannot say."

"I believe that's a question for Mr. Snart," Stein said softly.

They parked the Waverider somewhere more secure than the Common and settled in, too nervous to bring Snart into the time stream before he was stable. Gideon healed what she could and instructing them to bandage what she couldn't, but he'd still have a long road ahead of him. Holes in lungs repaired, but ribs still broken. Concussion on top of concussion. His left wrist was held steady in a brace, fractured beneath the now-healed burns. Not perfect, Mick noticed as his fingers trailed over skin that felt too-rough. Gideon promised she'd keep working on him, but there were limits to what she could to, to how much his body could handle.

So they lingered, anxious and pacing. Sara bit her nails down to the quick. Ray baked enough that Amaya and Nate found themselves handing out muffins at Mass General just to get rid of them.

Mick stayed by Leonard's side, reaching for a hand, but too scared to touch.

Not a past version, he reminded himself. It was the one they'd lost. The self-sacrificing asshole that had slipped a ring in his pocket like it was a proper goodbye—like it was a goodbye at all. It wasn't. He'd kick his ass when he was healed. Punch him. Kiss him. Fuck, he'd marry him again if they stayed in Boston long enough to revisit where they'd done it the first time.

He couldn't do anything until Len woke up.

Until then, he waited.

Leonard woke up on the fourth day.

It started with a twitch of his fingers and a scrunch of his nose that Mick missed as he slept. The groan woke him up, startled so easily that he stumbled right out of the chair and finally—finally—grabbed his partner's hand. "Gideon, lights at ten-percent."

Another twitch. Another scrunch. His head rolled to the side, eyes pressed closed before they opened slowly. "Mick?" he croaked, confused and dazed.

Mick damn near started crying. "Yeah. Yeah. Right here, boss."

"Where..."

"Med bay. You okay?"

"Head..."

Mick nodded. "Gideon?"

"Already administered, Mr. Rory."

He nodded. "You're an asshole, you know that?"

Len hummed and drifted off again.

It was better than nothing.

They moved Snart out of the med bay by the end of the week, steps slow and Mick's hand firm at the small of Len's back. His old room that had become Mick's until it had somehow managed to turn into theirs again. He led his husband to the bed carefully, hand trailing up to cup the back of Len's head. A head tilt. A kiss. Mick didn't want to pull away, but he could practically taste the exhaustion on Len's tongue.

"Rest," he told him.

"I've been sleeping," Snart argued, even as he laid back against the pillows. He looked around. "You moved in."

"Yep," he said and didn't explain any further. "You good with having a roommate again?"

Len raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning to play nurse?"

Mick chuckled and nudged Len over. "You want a nurse, ask Blondie to put on one of the dresses. I'm not the one that likes wearing skirts."

Len huffed softly. "You like me in them."

"Never said I didn't."

Len settled in next to him, his good hand grasping lightly at Mick's shirt like he needed to make sure his partner didn't go anywhere. "It was me," he mumbled when he was half asleep. "Tried to make you hear me."

Mick went stiff. "What?"

"You weren't crazy," he continued, but it broke off into a yawn and he was out before Mick could push it any farther. Wide eyes staring down at Snart, Mick swore. Product of grief, his ass. He wasn't letting Stein live this one down.

The team left them behind in Boston, but not without tripping over themselves in their own doubts. Mick pushed them along, reminding them that they couldn't risk time jumping with Snart yet and that he needed more time to heal. They still had a job to do and a timeline to fix. They couldn't do that if they set up camp for however long the recovery was going to take.

"We'll check back in every week," Sara promised, but he didn't think her landings were that precise yet.

"Just don't disappear for two years," Snart said with a quirk of his lips.

She scowled at him, but her eyes were joking. "Don't rob a bank."

"No promises."

She sighed and looked between them. "You're sure?"

"Go," Mick said, waving her off. "You're paying for us to live in a hotel. We're not saying no to that."

"The Ritz," Len stressed.

"It's like Disneyland for crooks."

Sara pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"

"Definitely," Mick replied with a grin. "We'll call it a wedding gift from the team."

"You got married years ago."

"And your gift is very late," Len said with a sad nod.

Sara shot him a glare, but they still left them behind at a hotel that was too expensive for two bored criminals. They settled in with Len on the bed until he got his strength up and a pile of locks in his lap.

"You sure you can pick those one-handed?" Mick asked as he dug the stopwatch out of their bags.

"Wanna bet?"

"I'm still making you eat vegetables for dinner."

Len did it in record time and scowled through his serving of broccoli.

Mick stepped out of the bathroom, towel around his waist, and knocking water out of his ear. "Wanna bet Sara overshoots the landing and doesn't show today?" he asked, amused. No reply came and he glanced over, expecting Len to have fallen asleep again, but he was staring listlessly at the wall.

He sat on the edge of the bed, talking softly to his partner as he cupped his cheek. "Rise and shine, Lenny," he joked when the other man didn't lean into the touch. "Your skinny ass isn't skipping breakfast again."

He pinched Len's nose and watched him rear back, chuckling.

"Mick."

"Welcome back."

Len's glare softened to something a little more insecure. "Again?"

Mick shrugged. "You'll get it under control." He patted his leg. "Come on. Food."

"I'm not hungry."

"Do I look like I care?"

"We could do it again while we're here," Mick mused one morning when he joined Len by the windows overlooking the park. He pressed himself up against his husband's back, bare skin against the fabric of Len's shirt, and kissed a shoulder.

"We'd just have to do a third one with Lisa later."

"So?"

Snart turned in his arms, one eyebrow raised. "How many times are you asking me to marry you?"

Mick shrugged. "Dunno, but we should take out the 'til-death-do-us-part bit, because it doesn't seem to stick."

They got married again, dressed in designer suits Len insisted on while Mick pulled at the neckline. The old ring got resized and went back on Len's finger, because he was a sentimental bastard. Len stole Mick a new one that was similar to the original, because he was a klepto.

"The romance doesn't die if you pay for it," Mick laughed when Len slid the ring out of his wrist brace.

"But it's more fun."

He couldn't argue that. Besides, it felt good to have a have a band on his finger again.

Sara checked in every couple weeks—because Mick was right and she kept overshooting the landing—but they didn't leave Boston until Gideon cleared Snart for travel.

"He's safe to time jump?" Mick asked, hands curled into fists so that he didn't reach for Len's hand. "You're sure?"

"The temporal energy left from the Oculus is gone," she reported simply, but Mick still cast Snart a nervous look.

"You sure?" he checked, but they didn't really have a choice. Even if things went to shit and they didn't stay with the team, they still had to go back to Lisa eventually. At some point, they'd have to do a time jump with Len. There wasn't any way around it.

Len knew it, too. He reached out to grasp Mick's wrist. "I want my gun back." Yes, I'm sure.

Mick nodded. "Okay."

"Besides," Snart added, "we may have overstayed our welcome."

"What did you do?" Ray asked nervously.

"Nothing," they chorused innocently.

"Tell me you didn't make future headlines," Sara groaned.

"Not our names."

"Snart!"

The End